John Peter Zdrojewski Cabinetry

My Dad, our EJZ, on a visit to Argyle in the 1980s, brought along this pretty little cubbyhole shelf as a gift.

He mentioned that it had been in his family.  I,  fool that I was,  did not press for details.  Speculation is all that I have, in consequence.  Did Eugene's father, John Peter, make this?  If you have clues, I would like to hear them.

When you look the thing over and think about it, you realize that it is simple, but at the same time is of pleasing proportions.  In later times, various goofs would be paid to write about "human scale."  Well, literally for centuries to date, these ideas have been better expressed as ideas of proportion, brought to physical reality in architecture and sculpture and painting, and also, for goodness's sake, in kitchen-table and home woodshop projects.

For centuries in Europe, workingmen would see classical proportions in churches, courts, Parliaments, and reproductions of classical sculpture in paintings and in the round, and they would, naturally, internalize those proportions, and other aesthetic values.

What am I saying??  Workingmen built them!

Architects designed them, and workingmen built them: translated them into reality.

Their aesthetic memories and aesthetic faculties were not derailed by two-dimensional cartoon shows with screeching soundtracks.

It looks like plywood.  I think it is regular old, cheap plywood, cut by hand with one of those handsaws with a narrow blade; some perhaps with a coping saw. Then the pieces were stained and joined. It is simple work - no dovetailing - but it pleases, and it has served for near a century, I guess.

A man in humble circumstances can be Promethean if he has a skill and practices it.

He can have come over on the boat, and started life as a son of stevedores, but if he has a skill, and has been taught the patience and perseverance and the self-reliance to practice that skill, and has an aesthetic model in his head, he can make a beautiful thing.  On the kitchen table, if necessary.

What is the probable fate of a man who, in his humble circumstances, has been taught no skill because he has no father, has been taught by his culture and his government the precise opposite of patience and perseverance and self-reliance, and has in his head aesthetic models originating in violent city streets?

Who would wish such a fate for any man?  Who would promote fatherlessness and ignorance and dependency and instant gratification by any means?  And why would they do so?